“Think before you speak.” (A common saying.)

“Think before you ask.” (A corollary to the above common saying.)

“James 1:19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;” (English Standard Version)

Asking is a form of speaking, and my wife thinks that I ask too many questions. I more than half suspect that she is right. She wants me to try to think through a thing myself before I ask her a question. Because I know that she is right, I don’t particularly like her advice. There are reasons (or at least excuses) for my tendency to ask too many questions.

• I’m lazy.
• I am impatient.
• I don’t trust my own thought process, or the conclusions based on it.
• Related to my lack of trust is the fact that I have attention deficit disorder.
• I had a dad who was a perfectionist. I was afraid to displease him, and this led to me asking questions to make sure that I didn’t get it wrong. Of course, my many questions alsodispleased him.

However, I’m trying to learn how to practice the fine art of thinking through things before I ask for advice. This is the flip side of yesterday’s post, in which I made an impassioned plea for listening to the advice of others. It isn’t either/or; it is both/and. We do need to ask for advice, and we do need to think through things for ourselves.

So, I’ve had some teeny tiny victories in the realm of thinking-before-I-ask. I am going to mention two of them that occurred within the past twenty-four hours. Am I bragging? Yes! Yes, I am!

I bought a new mouse at OfficeMax yesterday. When I got it home, I thought that the package was defective. It did not have the little piece that you plug into your computer that makes the mouse work. (That piece is called a “dongle”. Who knew?! I certainly didn’t.)

I was going to take the mouse back, but I decided to have another look. I had noticed a little piece within the mouse itself next to the batteries that looked like a watch-a-ma-call-it dongle. I tried to pull it out, but I couldn’t and was afraid to break the confounded thing. So, I concluded that it must not be what I was looking for. However, I decided to have one more look. It still lookedlike it might be what I was looking for, so I tried pulling in a different direction . . . and it came out! My mouse is working just fine now, thank you very much!

A second vignette:

I have a combination lock, but I have forgotten the combination. Covid meant no Planet Fitness for a long time, and by the time I went back for a workout, my mind was locked out in terms of the sequence of numbers for the lock. I was about to throw the lock away, but I had this nagging feeling that I had that combination written down somewhere. But where?

I typed “COMBINATION LOCK” into my computer search bar. You’ll never guess what happened! Oh, you did guess. Right! A file came up with precisely those numbers. Sometimes, I’m more organized than I realize.

So, asking for the help of others is nothing to be ashamed of. However, it is a good thing to think for yourself, also. It is a simple thought, but even the simplest realizations are difficult for me. The simplest insights often hide in plain sight. And, of course, “simple to understand” is not synonymous with “easy to do,” is it?